Corrupt PST file 2

[ebouza70]

Good afternoon to all and a Happy New Year,

I performed a backup of a mailbox in Exchange 2003 using ExMerge, after running exmerge it said it had finshed backing up the mailbox but with some non-fatal errors. I did notice that the file size of the PST was 2 Gigs in size but the actual mailbox is almost 8 Gigs. For some reason after running ExMerge, ExMerge deleted the 2 Gigs of data it had backed up. I have tried to re-import the PST file back into the store where the mailbox resides, everytime I try to run the import ExMerge says it fails.

I then tried to open the PST file within my Outlook and it will not open and Outlook recommends to use the SCANPST.exe utility to diagnose and repair the PST file. When SCANPST is on the last stage and 98% complete it fails.

What recommendations can I try to restore this PST back into the the store.

Thank you in advance for all of your help,

Erick B

 

[Zelandakh]

Exmerge can copy or move data. I'd recommend getting the data back from a backup rather than trying to hard fix errors.

 

[strongm]

2GB is your limit with Exmerge, I'm afraid.

 

[Zelandakh]

Yes, I'd actually assumed the OP knew that which was an oversight. Exmerge doesn't really have a limit but it writes the data to a non unicode PST file which has a 2GB limit.

Just to clarify what strongm said...

 

[xmsre]

2 Gigs in size but the actual mailbox is almost 8 Gigs"

Break it out into date ranges to export to multiple pst files under two gigs.

 

[ebouza70]

Thank you very much for the quick responses. What I actually had to do was purchase a Outlook PST recovery utility which was able to repair the corrupt PST.

I tried re-importing the PST file which ExMerge created but ExMerge would constantly fail, that is why I purchased the recovery utility.

The name of the utility is Kernel Outlook PST Repair. I am currently running the repair utility and it is almost done restoring the PST.

Thank you once again for all of your answers,

Erick B

 

[58sniper]

Technically, you'd better limit .pst files to 1.92GB or smaller. Anything bigger than that and you'll corrupt the file, and you WILL LOSE DATA - even if you can repair it - YOU WILL LOSE DATA.

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/

 

[strongm]

>What I actually had to do was purchase a Outlook PST recovery utility which was able to repair the corrupt PST

Microsoft have a free tool that attempts the same thing

 

[Zelandakh]

Star for the OP who detailed which utility was used.

Star for strongm who detailed another one.